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Resources updated between Monday, December 01, 2014 and Sunday, December 07, 2014

December 6, 2014

UN General Assembly Hall

"Applicability of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, of 12 August 1949, to the OPT", A/RES/69/91, was adopted with 163 votes in favor, 7 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), and 9 abstentions (Australia, Cameroon, Côte D'Ivoire, Madagascar, Paraguay, Rwanda, South Sudan, Togo, Vanuatu).

"Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem", A/RES/69/93, was adopted with 58 in favor, 8 against (Australia, Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), and 11 abstentions.

"Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including, East Jerusalem, and the occupied Syrian Golan", A/RES/69/92, was adopted with 159 votes in favor, 7 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), and 12 abstentions.

"Operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East", A/RES/69/88, was adopted with 166 votes in favor, 6 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Palau, United States), and 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Paraguay, South Sudan, Vanuatu).

"Persons displaced as a result of the June 1967 and subsequent hostilities", A/RES/69/87, was adopted with 165 votes in favor, 7 against (Canada, Federated States of Micronesia, Israel, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, United States), and 6 abstentions (Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Madagascar, Paraguay, South Sudan, Vanuatu).

"The occupied Syrian Golan", A/RES/69/94, was adopted with 162 votes in favor, 1 against (Israel), and 15 abstentions.

"Work of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories", A/RES/69/90, was adopted with 88 votes in favor, 9 against (Australia, Federated States of Micronesia, Canada, Israel, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Panama, United States), and 79 abstentions.

"United Nations Relief and Works Agency's (UNRWA) official spokesperson in Gaza, Chris Gunness, reached a new low, urging a boycott of Israel's largest English-language newspaper, The Jerusalem Post on Twitter...

Gunness made waves this past summer for siding with Hamas during Operation Protective Edge. UNRWA, as well, stands accused of supporting the organization, designated terrorists by most Western countries, returning rockets found in its schools to Hamas, and hiring teachers affiliated with the terror group.

Gunness's comments were spawned by an op-ed published in The Jerusalem Post, in which Palestinian Human Rights activist Bassam Eid, who himself grew up in an UNRWA-administered refugee camp, called for a reform of the agency's mandate. According to Eid, UNRWA does not want to help Palestinians improve their lot in life. 'The more Palestinians suffer, the more power goes to UNRWA, which allows it to raise unchecked humanitarian funds and purchase munitions,' he wrote."

Bassam Eid, a prominent Palestinian human rights activist, has issued an urgent plea for a serious overhaul of UNRWA, the UN agency tasked with caring for the Palestinian refugees of the 1948 war in which Arab armies failed to prevent the creation of the State of Israel. Eid, the Director of the Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group, is currently visiting London, where he addressed a meeting at the British parliament organized by the Henry Jackson Society, an international relations think-tank, entitled "Perpetuating Statelessness? UNRWA, Its Activities and Funding." In that presentation, Eid, who was raised in the UNRWA refugee camp in Shu'afat, east of Jerusalem, harshly criticized the agency for perpetuating the plight of the refugees as well as for its political relationship with Hamas.

"The judicial authorities in Iran have extended by at least two months the detention of Jason Rezaian, The Washington Post's Tehran correspondent, his brother said on Wednesday, confirming a report by Human Rights Watch. Mr. Rezaian has been imprisoned without explanation since July 22, kept in solitary confinement and denied access to a lawyer.
"Mr. Rezaian's brother, Ali, said in a telephone interview that the order extending the detention was effective on Nov. 18. He said a notice of the extension was not conveyed to Mr. Rezaian or his family until recently. It was not clear why..."

On December 3, 2014 the UN General Assembly held a meeting on the "Twentieth Anniversary of International Year of the Family".

Whenever there is a discussion on "family" at the UN, many countries – almost all with abysmal human rights protection records – use the occasion to undermine international standards on gender equality and women's rights, as well as the right to non-discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.

As recently as June 2014 the UN top human rights body, the Human Rights Council, adopted a resolution "Protection of the Family" which aims at imposing a narrow, "traditional" definition of family (thereby excluding same-sex couples, single parents, and other forms of families) and subverting the protection of individual members of the family, including children and women, to the "rights" of the family as a whole. The resolution was supported by 26 Council members: Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, China, Congo, Cote D'Ivoire, Ethiopia, Gabon, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Philippines, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, South Africa, UAE, Venezuela and Vietnam. Voting against were: Austria, Chile, Czech republic, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Montenegro, Republic of Korea, Romania, UK and USA.

The General Assembly meeting on the Family heard the following from countries which all persecute LGBT individuals, or criminalize or prescribe the death penalty for homosexuality:

Pakistan, speaking on behalf of the President of the General Assembly, said that "gender equality and empowerment" have "their roots in the home."

Kuwait said "the family" was the basis of "religion, society, and love of the country."

Russian Federation said the family is "a union between a man and a woman" and that "the traditional family lay at the heart of Russian society."

Qatar "stipulated the need to strengthen the links between family members" and said "the family was the major promoter of ... gender equality and respect for human rights."

Belarus complained about "challenges facing the family", including an attempt to "blur the moral points of reference" and "apply the 'absolute of homocentrism' to redefine the role of the family in society".

Egypt said that "family issues should be given due attention, in accordance with each country's family laws, traditions and religious background." He was also "disappointed with the attempts .... to introduce the notions of gender identity and sexual orientation ...Such notions were counter-productive and imposing them would create a negative precedent in the work of the United Nations."

Iran said that "in pursuing Iranian religious and cultural values ... his Government was committed to continued efforts to promote the institution of the family."

Indonesia said the family "empowered women to fulfill their role in development".

"There is only so much international aid to go around, and one reason why the World Food Program is running out of money is because the bloated, superfluous UNRWA keeps on manufacturing its own 'crises' every couple of months to keep its own cash flow coming.

Last week, UNRWA declared an 'emergency' because of flooding in Gaza that did not kill or injure a single person.

While the WFP needs some $64 million a month to stop people from starving, UNRWA is demanding $1.6 billion from the international community on top of $300 million it demanded earlier this year.

Even crazier is that UNRWA also solicits money for the relatively small percentage of Syrian refugees who fall under its mandate. Rather than a single UN fundraising effort for all Syrian refugees to ensure fair distribution, UNRWA has a separate program because the UN makes a distinction between refugees who happen to have some ancestors who lived in British Mandate Palestine in 1947 and all others. The UNHRC and WFP are struggling to give Syrian refugees the basics of food and medical care while the Palestinians who fall under UNRWA's mandate receive much higher levels of aid per capita, including schooling and medicine."

"Al-Shabaab militants raided a quarry in Kenya, separating non-Muslim workers from their Muslim counterparts and executing them, a spokesman for the group said Tuesday.

"At least 36 bodies were found Tuesday dumped in the quarry in the village of Kormey, near the Somali border, the Kenyan Red Cross said.

"Al-Shabaab said the attack was retaliation for mosque raids that Kenyan security forces carried out last month to weed out extremists.

"Kormey is about 15 kilometers (9 miles) from the border city of Mandera, in an area where the Somalia-based Al-Shabaab militants are known to operate.

"Last month, the Islamist militants ambushed a bus in Kenya and sprayed bullets on those who failed to recite Quran verses, killing at least 28 people, authorities said.

"The bus, which had 60 people aboard, was heading from Mandera to the capital of Nairobi.

"The group says the latest attacks are a response to the police raid on multiple mosques in the port city of Mombasa after explosives were found in one.

"'Our Mujhahideen forces are always ready to launch frequent deadly cross-border attacks against Kenya as a revenge,' group spokesman Sheikh Ali Dheere said in a statement read on a pro-Al-Shabaab radio station in Somalia..."

"Three unknown assailants invaded the home of a Jewish couple in the Paris suburb of Créteil on Monday, raped the 19-year-old woman, and robbed the home, saying it was "because you are Jewish," local French media reported on Tuesday.

'The Jewish community is in shock over this,' a journalist who covered the story told The Algemeiner. Noting the concern about the case, he said, 'When I posted the story on my social networks – they went crazy from reshares.'

The two were at her 21-year-old boyfriend's parent's home in the heavily-Jewish suburb, when the three masked attackers broke in, after the couple answered the door.

'They came to rob everything, especially the cash,' according to the Francophone JSS News Service. 'According to the victim's testimony to the police 'they demanded more money and pointed out that we are Jews,' the journalist said."

"Iran is seeking a senior post on a United Nations committee that decides accreditation of non-governmental organizations, a move that Israel on Tuesday compared to gangster Al Capone running the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Iran was elected to the 19-member committee in April for a four-year term from 2015. The United States and Israel are also members of the committee, which acts as a kind of gatekeeper for rights groups and other NGOs seeking access to UN headquarters to lobby and participate in meetings and other events.

In a letter obtained by Reuters, Iran presented its candidacy for vice-chair of the committee, which will begin meeting in late January."

Mohammad Javad Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s "Human Rights Council", was invited to conference on "Protection of Human Rights in Iran and Italy" held in Rome

"[A] topsy-turvy situation is unfolding where an abnormal regime in Tehran is being mainstreamed as normal.

A telling example is an Iran-Italy conference this week in Rome titled 'Protection of Human Rights in the Penal-Judicial System of Iran and Italy.'

The head of Iran's Human Rights Council, Mohammad Javad Larijani, appeared at the event. This is the same Larijani who defended the stoning of women and denied the Holocaust at a 2008 German foreign ministry event.

According to a Sunday report by the Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, Larijani said at the conference that Iran is 'the most powerful and advanced democracy in the region.'

He lamented that 'since the victory of the Islamic Revolution, there have been many discussions between Iran and the West on different topics, and unfortunately some of these topics have been misunderstood and misinterpreted due to a lack of information about the rational nature of the Islamic Republic system's pillars and its mechanisms.'"

Five Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades operatives killed on July 17-18, 2014, during a clash between IDF forces and a Hamas ambush in northern Gaza.

The findings to date

1. This document is the seventh in a series of publications of the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (ITIC), as part of a project examining the names of the Palestinians killed in Operation Protective Edge. The project's goal is to determine which of the fatalities are terrorist operatives and which are non-involved citizens, and to examine the ratio between them. The findings of the ITIC's examination so far (based on approximately 54% of the names of the dead) suggest that terrorist operatives constitute about 52% of the fatalities who have been identified, and non-involved civilians constitute approximately 48%. This ratio may vary in the future.